Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support NHS patients in Newcastle who are withdrawing from prescription anti-depressants.
Answered by Will Quince
In March 2023, NHS England published “Optimising personalised care for adults prescribed medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: framework for action”. Developed in partnership with integrated care system leads this framework sets out actions to help systems develop plans that can support people who are taking medicines associated with dependence and withdrawal symptoms. The actions are supporting ICSs to deliver on their 4 key objectives of:
- improving outcomes in population health and healthcare;
- tackling health inequalities in outcomes, experience and access;
- enhancing productivity and value for money; and
- helping the NHS support broader social and economic development.
The actions have been co-produced with a range of stakeholders including:
- patients with lived experience and groups representing them;
- charities and voluntary sector organisations;
- clinical experts; and
- national organisations, for example the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
Under the guidance of the prescribing professional, someone who is stopping antidepressants may be advised to start or continue psychological or psychosocial interventions. Examples of such services in Newcastle include Talking Therapies (formerly known as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies), mental health support in the voluntary and community sector, online confidential advice and support, and social prescribing.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has plans to use (a) schools and (b) nurseries to deliver health services in disadvantaged communities.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Government supports the use of place-based services and integrated delivery, particularly where this will improve access for more disadvantaged communities. The Government is funding 75 local authorities in England with higher levels of deprivation through the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. This will ensure that parents and carers can access Start for Life services locally during the critical period from conception to age two and will make an important positive difference to the experiences of families across the country. We are also continuing to roll-out Mental Health Support Teams in schools and colleges across England.
Health services should be available and accessible at times and locations that meet the needs of children, young people, and families. Schools and nurseries can function as particularly effective settings. However, decisions concerning the commissioning and location of provider premises are made locally, following engagement with service users and other key stakeholders.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to support ProMED-mail.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has an epidemic intelligence service which uses data from multiple sources. The agency does not currently have plans to engage specifically with the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) but is following developments closely and will consider opportunities for collaboration.
UKHSA’s Emerging Infections and Zoonoses (EIZ) team gathers information on incidents and outbreaks of infectious diseases via their Epidemic Intelligence process on behalf of the Government. This process predominantly uses information collected using the World Health Organization’s Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources platform. In addition, the EIZ team scan additional sources which include the International Society for Infectious Diseases’ ProMED programme.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the R&D budget is of the UK Health Security Agency Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The information is not held in the format requested as the research & development budget is not separated from the wider budget of the Vaccine Development and Evaluation Centre.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) life sciences and (b) health innovation programmes his Department provides funding to in the North East.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department supports the United Kingdom life sciences sector via the Office for Life Sciences and provides funding for research infrastructure across the whole of England through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
In the North East, the Newcastle Health Innovation Partners (NHIP) works with innovators to discover, develop and deliver new solutions in healthcare to improve the health of its population. The NHIP brings together the NIHR research infrastructure, the NIHR Clinical Research Network and the Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria.
The Government’s Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund supports businesses investing in life sciences manufacturing projects in the UK. Two companies in the North East have been awarded funding.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to increase clinical trials capacity in the North East.
Answered by Will Quince
To increase clinical trials capacity in the North East, the Department provides funding through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) infrastructure in line with the Government’s Vision for the Future of UK Clinical Research. This includes investment in the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN), NIHR Clinical Research Facility (CRF) and NIHR Patient Recruitment Centre (PRC).
The NIHR CRN supports patients, the public and health and care organisations throughout England to participate in high-quality research; the NIHR Local CRN North East and North Cumbria facilitates effective and efficient clinical trial participation, setup and delivery across the North East. Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was recently re-awarded funding for the NIHR Newcastle CRF for delivery of high-quality experimental medical research and early phase clinical trials. Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust also hosts one of five NIHR PRCs, a facility dedicated to delivering commercial research. In addition, NIHR recently awarded capital funding for new research equipment to NHS trusts, of which the North East received over £4 million.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason the Palantir Foundry pilot at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been paused; and whether there are (a) financial and (b) operational costs as a result of the pilot's pausing.
Answered by Will Quince
The implementation of Foundry products in Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is centred around two key solutions using the platform.
The first of these is the Improving Elective Care Coordination for Patients Programme (IECCP), which provides solutions designed to: validate waiting lists to ensure accuracy; enable clinicians to tell patients where they are on the waiting list and easily reprioritise them where required; and calculate the number of un-booked minutes in a theatre session and ‘suggest’ patients to fill gaps based on their priority, making theatre scheduling significantly more efficient. The rollout of IECCP at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been live since March 2023.
The second of these is the OPTICA solution deployed as part of the Dynamic Discharges programme of work, which is designed to: provide a blueprint to help the National Health Service manage the way patients are discharged, freeing up beds for those in most need; increase the timeliness of discharge for patients; and improve bed utilisation. Rollout of the OPTICA solution at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is dependent on the implementation of the IECCP modules (which were completed in March 2023) and updates to the Trust’s Electronic Patient Record to enable electronic collection of discharge information.
Due to operational pressures, the Trust temporarily paused engagement of OPTICA. However, it is now in a position to recommence activity.
No costs have been incurred as a result of the pause in delivery because the OPTICA implementation resources originally allocated to the Trust were diverted to implement the solution in other trusts. However, the OPTICA Team is now scheduled to begin discussions with the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to implement OPTICA as quickly as the Trust can accommodate.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to encourage patient participation in the NHS federated data platform.
Answered by Will Quince
The Federated Data Platform (FDP) refers to software which will enable National Health Service organisations to bring together operational data, currently stored in separate systems, to support staff to access the information they need in one safe and secure environment. The FDP will allow staff to plan theatre time to maximise use, drawing together information on clinical need, waiting times, staff rotas, and other operational data.
The NHS will ensure public engagement is focused on how data will be used within the FDP. To do this, the FDP programme is actively engaging and involving patients and the public in decisions about how data will be used with the platform, and about how to best to meet the duty of transparency and open communication. It has published clear and accessible information, and will continue to do so, including details about who will access data and for what purpose. Where possible, public information will be co-created with public/patient groups and representatives.
The FDP programme will: be clear about people’s rights and choice to opt out (where applicable); has undertaken a series of public deliberation events and national research to understand the views of the public in relation to how their data is used, and to understand their expectations regarding how they are informed about its use; will engage with the public for the life of the programme, ensuring alignment to other data programmes, the development of a national data pact and engagement related to Data Saves Lives, the national data strategy; will engage the public, in a range of ways, to understand their views regarding patient data, including monitoring monthly through a public survey; and will continue to work closely with stakeholder groups who represent and champion the voice of the public and patients.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of waiting times for elective care on the mental health of people with arthritis.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department has not made any assessment of this potential impact. However, cutting waiting lists is one of the Government’s top priorities. We are making good progress on tackling the longest waits, to ensure patients get the care they need when they need it.
To support elective recovery, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund, to help drive up and protect elective activity. As part of the Autumn Statement 2022, the Government announced an additional £3.3 billion for 2023/24 and 2024/25 to support the National Health Service in England, enabling rapid action to improve emergency, elective and primary care performance towards pre-pandemic levels. Taken together, this funding could deliver the equivalent of around nine million more checks and procedures and will mean that the NHS in England can aim to deliver around 30% more elective activity by 2024/25 than before the pandemic.
We met our target to virtually eliminate long waits of two years or more for elective procedures in July 2022, and significantly reduced the number of patients waiting 18 months or more by April 2023 by over 91% from its peak in September 2021.
Our next ambition is to eliminate waits of 65 and 52 weeks. Steps being taken include increasing capacity, seeking alternate capacity in other trusts or the independent sector, and engaging with patients to understand their choices.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much Government funding was allocated to dementia research in each of the last five years.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Government responsibility for delivering dementia research is shared between the Department for Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation, mainly by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
The amount spent by these funders, excluding the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council and Innovate UK, on dementia research for the last five years of available data is shown in the table below.
Year | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 |
NIHR | £43 million | £31.6 million | £29 million | £21.9 million | £31.3 million |
MRC | £34.9 million | £56.5 million | £44 million | £46.9 million | £41.6 million |
ESRC | £4 million | £7.4 million | £5.9 million | £8 million | £7.4 million |
Total | £81.9 million | £95.5 million | £78.9 million | £76.8 million | £80.3 million |
Spend for dementia research is calculated retrospectively and is usually finalised around eight months after the end of the financial year. Therefore, 2021/22 is the most recent year we have full data for.